Unrivaled 2025: Bill Carmody of Susman Godfrey

You served as lead trial counsel in In re: National Football League’s Sunday Ticket Antitrust Litigation. The jury awarded more than $4.7 billion in damages, one of the largest antitrust verdicts in US history. Though the trial court vacated this verdict on a post-trial motion, it left untouched the jury’s determination that the NFL violated two different provisions of the Sherman Act. Can you tell us about your trial strategy?

Our trial strategy was to expose the truth – and we did so by using the NFL’s own internal documents. We trusted that if we explained the story using the NFL’s own documents, then we would not need to “dumb things down” even though it was a complicated antitrust case. We believed that this strategy would prevent the NFL from credibly denying the truth and that the jury would be smart enough to understand why the NFL’s actions were so anticompetitive.

At a very high level, the case was about how the NFL teams reached a series of agreements with each other, with over-the-air broadcasters FOX and CBS, and with DirecTV to (1) require that out-of-market Sunday games were sold only as an exclusive DirecTV package for a “premium” price (2) in order to limit distribution of those out-of-market games and (3) in turn protect FOX and CBS from competition for viewership. In exchange, DirecTV, CBS, and FOX paid the NFL significant “exclusivity premiums” to the tune of billions of dollars – while the NFL’s most avid fans were overcharged and underserved.

Those core facts could not be disputed at trial. And while NFL witnesses denied during their sworn testimony that the NFL had any involvement in influencing the specific price DirecTV charged for Sunday Ticket, we didn’t let that discourage us. Instead, we embraced that testimony and showed the jury, based on the NFL’s own documents, that this “company line” simply wasn’t true.

Can you describe a major hurdle that happened during the course of the NFL antitrust case? How did you overcome it?

The case was initially dismissed on the pleadings, a decision which we appealed to the Ninth Circuit and successfully reversed. Obviously, we are facing a similar challenge now based on the trial court’s post-trial rulings and are similarly appealing. We hope the jury’s verdict, and the truth, will prevail.

When did you first know you wanted to be a trial lawyer? What clicked for you?

As a kid—and I’m dating myself—I loved Perry Mason. The investigation, trial traps, and jury verdicts captivated me. I loved the theater of trial and wanted to be the one who captivated the jury and convinced them of the right result — a win for my client.

What are the major keys to winning over a jury or a judge?

Be yourself. Too often, lawyers try to act like someone else and juries see right through it. They can spot the act a mile away. The moment you start pretending, you create a wall between yourself and the very people you need to persuade.
A jury will only believe you if you are genuine and comfortable in your own skin. That’s why authenticity is every trial lawyer’s greatest weapon.

What’s the best advice a mentor lawyer or judge gave you about trial prep?

“You don’t have to be the smartest lawyer in the courtroom, but you had better be the most prepared. The most prepared will win almost every time.”